Kong is a species of the Great Ape who is one of the few alpha Titans, and one of the most powerful creatures on Earth. He is one of the only survivors of his Great Ape species, the Kong species, that have been almost wiped out completely by the war between the Godzilla species and his kind and later on by the Skullcrawlers.
Kong is also the protector and guardian of both Skull Island and later, the Hollow Earth, defending them from Titans that attempted to conquer them. He is also Suko's adoptive father, Godzilla's former rival, ally and partner and the leader of the Hollow Earth Great Ape tribe after Kong, Godzilla and Shimo destroyed Skar King, the Hollow Earth Great Ape tribe's tyrannical leader.
Overview
Name
Throughout the MonsterVerse timeline, this Kong specimen is named Kong (コング, Kongu) onscreen and in the promotional materials of the films he starred in. In 2019, during the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Monarch refers to Kong as Titanus Kong, but the cryptozoological classification for his species in the MonsterVerse is dubbed as "Apus Giganticus".[1]
Design
During the making of Kong: Skull Island, the director Jordan Vogt-Roberts stated that he wanted Kong to feel like a "lonely god, he was a morose figure, lumbering around this island," and took the design back to the 1933 incarnation, which presented Kong as a "bipedal creature that walks in an upright position."[2]
Vogt-Roberts had also stated:
If anything, our Kong is meant to be a throwback to the '33 version. [Kong] was a movie monster, so we worked really hard to take some of the elements of the '33 version, some of those exaggerated features, some of those cartoonish and iconic qualities, and then make them their own…We created something that to some degree served as a throwback to the inspiration for what started all of this, but then also [had] it be a fully unique and different creature that – I would like to think – is fully contained and identifiable as the 2017 version of King Kong. I think there are very modern elements to him, yet hopefully, he feels very timeless at the same time.
